


All Just A Job

by Ryumaru



Category: League of Legends, Shadowrun
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Corporate Espionage, Crimes & Criminals, Gen, Hacking, Heist, Infiltration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-05-12 13:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5668282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryumaru/pseuds/Ryumaru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Veteran Shadowrunner Sarah Fortune accepts a job. It's the standard - mysterious clientele, illegal break-ins, promises of piles of money, and more lies of omission than an online dating profile. Her employer wants her to get a team, crack a data vault, and acquire some information on a corporate CEO. The catch? Her target is a new company, N.O.X. United Systems Technologies, and other runners tend to disappear when they try to get inside. She's going to need the best. She'll get the best. And assuming they survive, they'll each walk away with a healthy payday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Datasteal

**Author's Note:**

> Hoi, chummers. Welcome to a tale of betrayal, intrigue, and thrills. 
> 
> ... nah, I can't do it. This is a story about people in the shadows, making a living doing dirty work that others won't admit to. And one shadowrunner in particular who thought she had an easy contract, but got a little cocky. And in this case, she can't just respawn back at home....
> 
> Have fun guessing who's who!

The restaurant was full of patrons, dining under rich banners and crystal chandeliers. The clatter of silverware on the finest china rose over the quiet, refined conversations taking place - the kind filled with corporate buzzwords, high-society skulduggery, and intricate politics. Very little in the dining room could be called dirty, except perhaps the secrets. The whole place had a feeling of being scrubbed so clean as to be sterile compared to the world around it. Even diners who had once lost something had artistic, glittering replacements in the form of top-of-the-line, custom-tailored prosthetics. You had to look very closely to see that some of the replacements actually were replacements. Many of the people ate here regularly, keeping their appetites sated on fruit and vegetables grown in corporate complexes, on bread with actual crusts and baked with actual yeast, on meat instead of soy.

To someone like Sarah Fortune, it was all a reminder that she was nothing more than a guest in their world. In the past, her only “regular” meals had been cheap drek made from soy and krill, and even then that had been expensive for her budget. Spun proteins and sugars, manufactured by megacorps to fill empty bellies halfway and make them think they were sated, had been her bread and butter, so to speak. 

Now, of course, was different. Taking to the shadows had been natural for her. An orphan on the streets of Seattle had to earn their right to live, according to most, including what she could safely assume was the entire population of the restaurant she was in right now. A few disagreed, of course. It was thanks to them that she had survived. After that, the moment she had been able to hold tools for the rigger to fix his drones and the dented van he drove, she had considered herself one of them. A shadowrunner. 

A good runner occasionally got to see the world of the corporate-born, like she was now. The long nights in the acid rain, usually surrounded by the broken dregs of metahumanity, and often blood and bullets, sometimes paid off. An elf like herself, slender and quick, could make good money alongside orks, trolls, dwarfs, and humans doing the dirty work that governments and megacorporations wanted to keep quiet. The streets of Seattle in 2075 made a dangerous world, but with that danger came the promise of rewards, if you kept your head down and were willing to pay with a bit of your moral code. 

A brief moment of reflection on all of this led the veteran runner to wonder what new stains her potential employer would like to put on her soul. 

The woman sitting across from her, sipping wine that probably cost a couple thousand nuyen a bottle, was what veterans of the business referred to as a “Johnson.” There were Mr.’s and Ms.’s, blondes and brunettes, thin ones and stocky ones, but they all gave fake names, and usually-faker information about who they represented. This one was a blonde, claiming to represent an up-and-coming security firm - not quite big enough to qualify as a megacorp just yet, but still bigger than what little remained of the mom-and-pop businesses from yesteryear. 

“Please, Ms. Fortune, have something. I choose only the best for my guests, and you’re here as one, after all.” 

Sarah inwardly gritted her teeth. Everything about this woman was plastic - her manicured nails, her perfectly-coiffed hair, her smile; even her voice was corporate-cut and cleansed. It was all so perfect, and it made her nervous. Even when she’d met with Johnsons from the Triple-A megacorps, the real power players on an international scale, they’d at least tried to seem real. But this woman acted almost like one of those poor people who’d been forced into working in a bunraku parlor. Hideous places, where the women (and men) selling themselves were made into puppets. The lucky ones were unaware of what happened when the chips in their heads took over. 

“Really, you’re beginning to worry me,” continued the woman. “I’m beginning to think you have no interest in our offer.” 

“If that were true,” replied Ms. Fortune with a sardonic smile, “then I’d have insisted on ordering for myself, taken the most expensive thing on the menu, possibly several times over, and left already.” 

The woman’s smile didn’t move, but her eyes betrayed her confusion. Her instruction manual probably didn’t come with tips for dealing with snarky shadowrunners. “Oh. Yes. Of course. Well. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to move on to our real business.” 

Allowing herself a moment of triumph, disguised behind a sip of wine, Ms. Fortune agreed. “Yes, I think it’s best if we don’t mince words.” The aftertaste - dry, airy, faintly sweet - lingered as she continued. “Your message to my contact mentioned very little. Only that you were offering a considerable payment for services rendered.” 

“You understand, of course.” The woman took a bite of filet mignon. “Very little of this conversation is allowed to reach anyone else’s ears.” 

“Which is why, naturally, you had your security detail strip me of my commlink when we met.” 

Said security detail, standing only a few meters away, consisted of a man who might have passed for an ork without tusks and a woman whose very posture served as evidence for the stereotype of “elven superiority complex.” Both were in well-tailored suits, the kind that Ms. Fortune recognized as being both formal enough for any corporate setting and armored enough to take more than one bullet. They also had matching sunglasses, presumably with numerous useful features, and equally-matching impassive expressions. They surveyed the restaurant with a look that Ms. Fortune knew well. It was the look of people who knew - didn’t think, _knew_ \- they had a dozen ways to kill you, but only if it was necessary. Anything else was a waste of effort. 

“Simple precautions, nothing more. We’re not Ares or Saeder-Krupp. We can’t afford a leak or two.” This time there was almost a hint of genuineness in her smile.

“I’m sure that representatives of either would be _thrilled_ to hear that.” She shifted in her seat, so as to get a slightly better angle of vision on the rest of the room. “Now then. To business. What do you want me to do?”

“It’s quite simple, really.” The woman reached into her purse and pulled out a few documents. _Documents_. On _printed paper_. These people really were old-fashioned. Or they didn’t want a digital trail. “The most basic of your objectives are detailed here.” 

Finally allowing herself some actual food, Ms. Fortune took the papers and studied them as she bit into a dinner roll. Trying to ignore how good the simple texture of melted butter on warm bread was, she scanned the lists, saying nothing. The Johnson could sit and stew for a minute. 

Just as she felt the other woman was starting to get nervous, Ms. Fortune put down the papers and looked her clean in the eye. 

“Let me see if I have the gist of it. You want me, and whoever I elect to hire, to break into what I can only assume is the company that is your biggest rival, and steal the biographical information on their new CEO. Biographical information which, by your accounts, is securely locked in their most well-protected database, on-site.” 

“Any other pertinent data you can obtain will be paid for with a bounty, of course, but the history and key identifying information of the CEO is your primary objective.” 

Sarah Fortune closed her eyes. At least the woman hadn’t told her it would be easy. Those were the most frightening words a runner could hear from a client. The only words that surpassed them coming from anyone were “trust me.” The job was going to be hell, and that was judging only from the papers here. If it looked bad now, just wait until the things she hadn’t been told came to light. 

But. The money was good. _Very_ good. 

Ms. Fortune double-checked the line detailing pay. Ten thousand nuyen in advance for expenses. That alone was hard to turn down. But the bottom-line pay….

“Six hundred thousand for a biography?”

The woman nodded. “For the whole ‘crew.’ We can’t afford to pay like that ‘per head.’ Yet. We’re hoping your work can change that.” 

Despite the obvious quote marks around lingo that was unfamiliar to Miss Corporate Born, she did admittedly have the know-how to lay out a carrot when the situation warranted. There was one other hitch, however. 

“I notice you don’t mention the actual name of this company anywhere on here.” 

“Ah, yes, that. Well. We wanted everything to be as secure as possible. No trails.” 

“I see. Then, in the interests of disclosure, I’d like to know whose vaults I’ll be breaking into, and who I’ll potentially be making an enemy of.” 

“You’ll recognize the name, I’m sure.” There was another brief flash of genuine amusement. “Perhaps we should have let you keep your commlink for a quick Matrix search. No matter. You’ll be making your acquisition from a similarly-sized company to ours - N.O.X. United Systems Technologies.” 

A Matrix search would indeed have been beneficial. The name wasn’t familiar to the veteran runner. Perhaps they weren’t based in Seattle. Then again, any kind of big business outside the Triple-A’s didn’t get a lot of press, especially in the shadows. 

“How long would I have to complete the job?”

“We expect a return within two weeks.” 

“That’s quite a generous timeframe.” 

“For a job to be done as thoroughly as we want it to be, we can allow some more time.” 

“Alright. How ‘thorough’ do you want it?”

“If you want to be paid in full, you’ll leave no trace of yourselves within the digital system itself, though I understand most ‘runners’ try to avoid that in the first place. You will also leave no evidence of who hired you, and of there being any money involved in our transaction at all.”

Ms. Fortune settled back in her seat. This was really fairly standard. There were some corps that would have their hired runners shot, usually by other runners, to keep word of their involvement from getting out. There was something else that she wasn’t being told. 

“Any other conditions I need to know about?”

The plastic smile remained in place, but the woman’s eyes glittered. “Nothing that you need to worry about.” The words tugged at her thoughts, almost like a begging child tugging on a parent’s sleeve to get them to buy a treat. 

Ah. _There_ it was. 

“You know,” said Ms. Fortune, smiling like a cat with a canary, “most runners would consider it extremely rude of their clients to try magically persuading them to accept a job.” 

The woman froze. “I-.” She stopped and swallowed. “I have no idea what you mean.” 

“Really? No need to hide the fact that you’re Awakened, you know. It’s not the 2020’s and I don’t see any ultraconservative policlubs here in Seattle anymore. I’m just giving you a friendly tip. If you want to conduct future business.” 

Clearly flustered, the woman took a rather large sip of her wine. “If you are going to refuse our contract, then-”

“Hold on there. I didn’t say I was refusing. Just that your little trick wasn’t going to work. Trying it took backbone, especially from someone as plainly new to this as yourself. You’re not the same as the others Johnsons I’ve talked to. I might be able to respect that.” Finished with her dressing-down, Ms. Fortune leaned forward. “You’re offering good money. Suspiciously good. Telling your prospective employee just why you’re doing that might be a good idea.” 

“It’s not my place to say everything, you understand.” 

“Oh, of course, of course. You’re only acting on behalf of your higher-ups. That’s fine. All I want to know is why you’re offering more than half a million for a little bit of biography.”

“It’s simple, really. Nobody else has it. N.O.X. and its board are the only ones who know anything outside of the man’s name. We have a dedicated interest in… having some light shed on that”

Ms. Fortune’s grin would have made sharks envious. Now _this_ was valuable information. “I see,” she said. “Well, in that case….” 

She leaned back again, giving her client a long, studious look. The woman was shaken that her trick hadn’t worked, and clearly hadn’t been expecting to have to give out that little tidbit. A shadowrunner could live very, very comfortably off of highly exclusive information. Courier jobs and burglary could be thrilling, but they never paid as much as a bit of brokering. Auctions for secrets of this caliber could reach multi-million bids. 

“I think I’ll take you up on your job.” 

The woman smiled with relief. “Excellent.” She signaled to the larger of her two bodyguards. “If you’d be so kind as to hand me her commlink….” 

Wordlessly, the broad-shouldered man handed over the little tablet. There was a brief moment where Ms. Fortune basked in the thrill of payment, even if it was very little compared to what was incoming.

Her blood ran cold. 

_He was handing the commlink to her Johnson._

It was too late. She could hardly try to take it back now, as that would risk making her client angry. In her sudden cockiness, thinking she had “beaten” the Johnson and won, she had forgotten one of the foremost rules of the shadows - trust no one, especially if they’re corporate. And now her client had, in her hands, everything she needed to make her life a living Hell on a whim. 

The woman put on a pair of AR glasses, tapping away at the screen of the commlink. “There we go,” she said, smiling brightly. “We’ve wired ten thousand nuyen to your account, as promised. 

For a brief moment, Ms. Fortune held on to the hope that her client was as naive as she’d seemed. 

“Ah, and there we have… my, that really is quite a number of System Identification Numbers.” 

So much for that. 

“And that really is your real name? I thought it was some amusing appellation.” The woman tittered - _tittered_ , for God’s sake - at the fact that Sarah Fortune had been using her given name for shadowrunning purposes. “Quite a diversion. Nobody would think it would be an actual name. How very amusing! And with all of these fake numbers, I suppose you really can’t call yourself SINless, can you?”

It was a stupid joke to some, but being born without a System Identification Number was an excuse to use a play on words as a badge of honor to others. The SINless were those outside the system. SINners were those on the other side, the ones tracked and monitored by dozens of corporations at a time through their daily actions. A fake SIN was necessary for a runner to survive, and Ms. Fortune had tried to be prepared. Unfortunately, only one or two of her fake SINs were not stored on her commlink, which had the best digital protections her money had been able to buy, and some custom work besides. 

She berated herself for letting herself get careless. Digital protection meant drek when she handed her own damn commlink to a potential enemy. 

“And… there. All finished! We now have a perfect copy of your numbers, as well as all of your contact information. We’ll be checking in regularly.” 

With a smile so bright it wrapped right back around into smug, the woman handed Ms. Fortune her commlink back. Hundreds of curses flitted through her mind as she took it, and she wondered if she’d done something tremendously cruel in a previous life to deserve such a punishment. There was no way her little bit of hubris warranted such a damnation. Maybe she’d been a Nazi, or shot puppies, or been a member of Humanis. 

“Now, if that’s everything, we’ll send you a direct file with all of our information later. Can’t let you go in completely unaware, now, can we?” The woman stood up. “Feel free to finish your meal. I really must be going. Business to attend to. You understand.” 

Even as she sat in stunned silence, Ms. Fortune watched them go. At the door, she saw the other bodyguard - the elf - turn. There was a brief moment of presumed eye contact from behind the sunglasses, and the woman pushed her jacket aside just enough to let Ms. Fortune see the hilt of a weapon stowed safely under the material. While she couldn’t recognize the exact model, she knew the shape of that hilt. The woman bore a collapsible monofilament saber, modeled after the duelling blades of old. This one, however, was fully capable of slicing a troll in half with a precise strike. The message clearly delivered, the woman left. 

It took a full minute for Sarah to recover her wits. This wasn’t beyond saving. All she had to do was do the job. 

She’d need the best. She could get the best. She knew exactly where to start, too.


	2. Resonance

A buzz on the commlink jolted the man out of his fitful sleep. In the darkness of the shabby apartment, he fumbled for the device. He found it beneath a pile of dirtied clothes, just over the side of his mattress. Half-conscious, he tapped the “audio-only” button. 

“H’lo?” he slurred into the receiver, his normally whiskey-warm voice creaking with sleep.

“Tobias. It’s me.” 

The man began to rub the sleep out of his eyes. Now there was a voice he hadn’t heard in a while. Since the last time he’d gotten paid, to be precise.

“S’rah?”

“Yes.” 

He blinked. His senses were finally coming up to speed. “Wh’re….” He smacked his lips, trying to get the taste of his tongue out of his mouth. “Where are you? I can hear cutlery.” 

“A job interview.” 

Tobias hauled himself upright. He knew the kinds of interviews his old compatriot went to. “Guessing it was a success?”

“Could say that. You mind running a search for me?”

“And you can’t do this because…?”

“I have reasons to not trust my commlink right now. Besides, you’re the best I know.” 

“Damn right I am. That’s why you called me when I was asleep.” 

“Sorry. But this is important.” 

“Alright, alright. What do you need?”

“N.O.X. United Systems Technologies. What do you know about them?”

“Not much. Some business, I think. Security and encryption tech, if I remember right.” 

“Good. Get me everything you can on them. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” 

“I-” 

_click_

Tobias sighed. Well, if that was the way it was going to be….

He rolled himself off the ragged mattress. He’d left his pants on, mercifully. Nobody liked seeing a nude Matrix avatar. He could alter it, sure, but it was just easier if he didn’t have to.

Summoning up all his available mental energy, Tobias focused on forcing his mind out of the resting state it had been in. As he did so, the scattered bits of technology around him glowed with an inner light only he could see. The power of the Matrix, the online world, was in his brain, a gift that few had and fewer understood. It had been labeled as technomancy, and he was one of the best out there. 

As his brain came back to full power, he shifted into the wondrous trance that was his immersion in the Matrix. The online world spread out before him, and he departed. 

He had to get as much done as he could in twenty minutes. While it was true that time in the Matrix was so much more… expanded than time outside of it, it still might not have been enough. He’d need help. 

With the ease of a trained performer, he reached out to the Matrix and called on it. Code flowed around his digital limbs, coalescing into a brilliant spot of light in the web of lines and data. A Sprite. 

Tobias didn’t need to say or program anything. The Sprite knew what it had been compiled for. It zipped off, in search of data. Anything relevant it found would be downloaded into his commlink for later perusal outside the Matrix. If he wanted, he could read it right here, without having to leave, but this would leave anyone without his gift ignorant of what he found. The Sprite would do most of the legwork, but there was something he could do in the meantime. 

The energy of the Matrix and technomancer combined, which others of his kind called Resonance, coiled around the man’s digital avatar. It would shield him from prying eyes, corporate and independent alike, keeping him from being spotted. It had been the first trick he’d learned, out of necessity. The mysteries of technomancy were a lucrative subject, one that many in this day and age would stoop to very low things indeed to learn. He’d heard the horror stories. He didn’t want to become one of them. 

Away he flew, across the grid lines of the Matrix networks of Seattle. He ducked around the avatars of others in the Matrix, normal people visiting through their commlinks or deckers entering through dedicated cyberdecks. He wondered, briefly, what it was like to be so limited, to not be able to feel the world of information pulse and respond to one’s presence. Perhaps it was something like the severance he felt outside, in the world of flesh and bone. 

Within moments, he reached his destination. GridGuide, that wonderful map of the streets, had led him to the main - and only - building for N.O.X. United Systems Technologies. Keeping his distance, he settled in to observe. 

The first few minutes, stretched out as they were in the digital landscape, were very boring. Tobias pushed a few inquiries towards the walls of security around the building, disguising them as simple navigational pings or geographical data searches. They met with the resistance of a steel bunker, getting only the briefest of answers before being locked out. 

Tobias frowned. The only way he could be more useless here would be if he couldn’t see some outline of the building, highlighted helpfully for GridGuide to keep cars from crashing into it. The only other Matrix presence the exterior had was in the signals its security protocols gave off. 

Then, he noticed a personal network approaching the building. A very well-defended one, with a distinct lack of corporate programming involved. A decker, looking to get inside? 

Still cloaked, he slipped closer. The network seemed to consist of a cyberdeck, a commlink, and a simple scout drone. Presumably, the decker needed something to watch his back in the event meatspace security didn’t like his presence. 

A flurry of coding attacked a weak point in the firewalls. They held, but barely. Tobias would have called it amateur work, but he knew what the decker was doing. They were testing the facility’s defenses, looking for how it responded. When nothing immediately returned fire, and no Intrusion Countermeasures sprung out to chase them away, they let loose a more focused attempt. 

There! They’d broken a hole in the firewall. Quickly, the avatar of the decker - a helmeted man in armor, by the looks of it, ducked through, leaving the signal of the commlink and drone behind. Tobias followed, expecting the hole to re-seal itself. It did not. 

Something about that fact made Tobias very, very nervous. He compiled another Sprite, an even simpler one, to watch the hole. If anything or anyone came to repair the firewall, he would know instantly. 

Inside, the building’s Matrix network was dark and forbidding. The decker moved cautiously, evidently looking for something. He hadn’t noticed Tobias’ presence, and that likely meant that the system hadn’t either. So long as he didn’t do anything overt, the technomancer would likely remain undetected. 

The darkness of the Matrix lit up in a small circle that started to float through the site. The decker had launched a very localized browse program, one that looked like it was searching for something in particular. Tobias followed at a distance, wondering what it could be trying to find. His curiosity was soon satisfied, as the circle stopped, quivered, and darted to what turned out to be a safe. Naturally, it wasn’t an actual safe in the physical world, more likely being a secured computer terminal, but here in the Matrix it was represented as one. Presumably, it contained what the decker was seeking, probably data requested by an employer. 

As the decker approached, a digital klaxon let off a short burst at the same time Tobias’ Sprite signaled to him that the firewall had begun to repair itself. A pair of floating cubes with spiky protrusions materialized, orienting on the decker’s position.Tobias recognized the programs as simple Killers, basic “White IC” programs designed to inflict as much damage as possible to an intruder’s Matrix avatar and force them out of the host site. 

The decker responded with lightning coding reflexes, spinning a few lines of code that conjured up some Killer programs of his own - faceless creatures in blue robes with wooden shields and spiked hammers. The speed with which it was done told Tobias, who had hidden himself further, blending in with the dark walls of the host site, that the decker was in virtual reality. Most casual users of the Matrix used simple augmented reality displays, but some dove headfirst into the digital world, immersing themselves as fully as possible. Some even took it a step further, illegally modifying their commlinks or cyberdecks to link into their nervous systems, creating a “hot-sim” environment with direct neural feedback. It was faster, it made the Matrix more real and let you actually feel what you were doing, but it was also dangerous. Pain experienced by your avatar would be felt by the “real” you. In the case of a technomancer, this was the only option - their digital self was, in many ways, their “real” self. 

The White IC programs opened fire with simple, utilitarian blasts of data, targeting the decker. In response, he ran a string of code that took the form of a shield, blocking the blasts. His programs attacked as he ran another string, materializing a personal attack program in the form of a sword. Tobias felt a fondness for the man’s theme, as taking the time to fully craft a persona and customized icons for all of one’s programs was the mark of someone who put care into their work. Tobias himself styled his icons on cards and dice, having long been a gambler and card shark outside of the Matrix. 

Deftly, the decker attacked the IC, cutting one of the cubes in half. He was good, Tobias had to give him that - the programs were well-made, probably the work of a full week. His accompanying programs struck the remaining cube, cracking its protective shell of code. It tried to return fire, but the decker was too quick for it, jamming the sword into one of the cracks and dispersing it. 

Tobias was impressed, but there was something about this that set him on edge. A building as poorly-defended as this did not become a full-fledged business….

The decker turned to the safe. He reached out to begin cracking whatever codes kept it shut, but as he did there was another klaxon, this one a terrifying shriek like some kind of scavenging bird. Suddenly, the host site got darker, and monolithic towers of stone erupted from the ground, locking onto the decker with crimson glares from gems on their sculpted scepters. Half a dozen red-cloaked figures emerged from one tower, already charging the decker and his programs. 

It was a trap. A beautiful, brutal trap. Deckers would try to break in and face the most basic of White IC, get overconfident, and then they would face-

Had he been outside the Matrix, Tobias’ face would have paled. He’d looked at the code of the towers and figures. They were not simple IC programs by any stretch. He’d faced things like this before, but never alone. Whoever was defending this site didn’t want intruders ejected, they wanted them _dead_. 

They’d programmed in Black IC. 

Black IC was feared amongst the less law-abiding citizens of the Matrix, because attacks from the programs wouldn’t just hurt, they would send vicious neural feedback along the connection. On top of that, a hit would lock the unfortunate decker into their connection, rendering the only means of escape either outrunning or outgunning the IC, or having a friend forcibly terminate the connection from the physical world. It was, of course, ridiculously illegal, but the law always looked the other way when it came to corps.

The decker ran. His accompanying programs melted under the furious ruby-red blasts of the Black IC towers. Tobias had already begun bolting for the now-sealed exit, and he could see other forms of IC awakening throughout the site. Crimson-eyed ravens began circling the decker, presumably Patrol IC that would keep the system administrator informed of the intruder’s whereabouts at all times. 

Digital pulse racing, technomancer conjured some programs of his own, his quickening mind writing three lines of code at once. As he approached where the hole had been, he banished the Sprite and hurled his attack, the code taking the form of flying cards. 

The wall crumbled under his assault, targeted as precisely as the original had been. Tobias guessed that it had been designed to give way under specific conditions. 

Behind him, the decker had abandoned his shield and sword, as well as any pretense of dignity as he scrambled for the exit. He pushed as hard as he could, piling on speed, but it wasn’t enough. The Black IC towers had locked on and fired, the bursts of energy hitting his avatar and causing him to stumble. The hooded creatures piled on, striking him with their weapons, eroding the integrity of his Matrix persona. Tobias could see, in his mind’s eye, the decker’s physical body jerking and twitching as the biofeedback lanced through him, slowly beginning to fry his neural network. None of the Patrol IC had caught sight of him yet, but his digital shroud was gone - if he re-entered the building to help the decker, he’d be targeted as well. The people behind this place were vicious and cruel, as well as efficient. If he valued his own hide, Tobias couldn’t afford to so much as conjure a Sprite. 

Fleeing for his life, Tobias listened to the decker’s digital screams come to a sudden stop. The helmet fell to the ground of the datascape, sitting forlorn for a moment before dissolving in a stream of code.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fewer characters in this one to guess, but I liked writing the Matrix section. Halfway through it I realized I had an opportunity to put in some very important bits of League, or at least some of the more recognizable ones. So I did it!
> 
> Technomancers are really interesting characters in Shadowrun, because, despite the name, their abilities are explicitly not actually magical. Of course, this means the megacorps (and everyone else with a scalpel and half a degree in biology) wants to get their hands on one.


	3. Connections

It took a while for Tobias to collect himself. Seeing the full power of N.O.X. unleashed on the hapless decker, his screams still ringing in his ears, had been terrifying. Whoever ran the company, they didn’t want any intruders. This told him two things: 

One, they were doing something that merited total secrecy.

Two, they had the backing and power to maintain that secrecy. 

Armed with this knowledge, and the knowledge that anything less than perfection could very well get him killed or worse on this job, he checked the time. Good. There was still a good ten minutes or so before his Sprite would get back and Sarah would arrive at his apartment. It was time to learn what he could from some of the best on the Matrix. 

Tobias set off for JackPoint. It was time to consult some other runners. 

[Welcome back to JackPoint BBS!]

[> Keyword Search: N.O.X. UNITED SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGIES]

[>Time constraint: TIME SINCE LAST POST: LESS THAN ONE WEEK] 

[>Searching….]

[>Topics Found: 1]

[>Search Results:]

[Topic: N.O.X. - Hiding something?]

[Guys, you know that new-ish corp on the rise in Seattle? I think something’s up with them. Got an offer from Ares Macrotech to go check out their defenses, and the stuff was kid-level. I was just about to head in and get some more data for ‘em but this random decker showed up and told me not to go in, said one of his buddies had died getting in. He looked dead serious, too. When I tried to keep going he told me that if I didn’t get out, he’d drag my ass back out himself.]  
\-- Cyclone [2075-4-22; 03:57:32 PM]

[Well? Did you leave or did he have to kick your ass?]  
\-- Baka Dabora [2075-4-22; 03:58:22 PM]

[What do you think? I left. If this guy was threatening me to get me to stay away, there must be some serious drek going on in there.]  
\-- Cyclone [2075-4-22; 03:58:46 PM]

[That guy was right, chummer. One of my old crew got a datasteal job on them. Went in, didn’t come back out. I went to check on him in meatspace and found his fried corpse on the floor. I’ve seen some Black IC in my day but this was the nastiest.]  
\-- Zeitrich [2075-4-22; 03:59:01 PM]

[If I heard right, Zeitrich, your friend was lucky. There’s rumors floating around of teams trying a B-and-E, vanishing, then “resurfacing” later as cyberzombie drones.]  
\-- The Smiling Bandit [Strikes again!; Ha-ha-ha]

[Come on, omae, you expect us to buy that horsedrek?]  
\-- CalFreeWorker342 [2075-4-22; 04:01:15 PM]

[Okay, but remember how we kept calling that on the Universal Brotherhood? If this ends with insect spirits again, CalFree, I hope you’ve got bug spray.]  
\-- Zeitrich [2075-4-22; 04:01:44 PM]

[Anyone else think it’s suspicious that we haven’t found anything yet? I’ve been decking like hell to find something and all I can find is the exec’s name.]  
\-- Bull [2075-4-22; 04:01:45 PM]

[You’re not the only one, Bull. Nobody’ll take a job to get near the place, though. It’s like the place is cursed. Hell, even Desert Raider won’t do it, and she took that wetwork job on that Aztechnology exec’s kid!]  
\-- brokenecho [2075-4-22; 04:02:52 PM]

[Which paid well, for the record.]  
\-- Desert Raider [2075-4-22; 04:03:09 PM]

[You are sick, lady.]  
\-- brokenecho [2075-4-22; 04:03:19 PM]

[Can the static, you two. Settle your personal disputes off the board. You’ve been warned twice already.]  
\-- Bull [2075-4-22; 04:03:47 PM]

[Hey, she started it! If you insult my friends, you insult me!]  
\-- brokenecho [2075-4-22; 04:03:59 PM]

[Even when they go and join the Star? Become the enemy?]  
\-- Desert Raider [2075-4-22; 04:04:10 PM]

[I said CAN IT.]  
\-- Bull [2075-4-22; 04:04:15 PM]

[You heard the ork. Either shut it or piss off a legend, your choice.]  
\-- Glitch [2075-4-22; 04:04:58 PM]

[Er… getting back on track… been hearing some whisperings about someone hiring a runner to try and get some dirt on the CEO. Anyone know anything about this? I thought one of my old associates might have picked up the job.]  
\-- Monsoon [2075-4-22; 04:06:32 PM]

Tobias, having caught up, began his own response. 

[Can’t say anything about that, omae, but I did just take a jander over in that direction. The ice is as nasty as they say.]  
\-- Twisted Fate [2075-4-22; 09:31:16 PM]

The reply was almost immediate. 

[Damn. Get in trouble yourself?]  
\-- Monsoon [2075-4-22; 09:32:14 PM]

[No. Watched some other sucker. Poor bastard went in, probably looking for paydata, got fragged by a Black IC ambush. The whole place is set up to look like a milk run, then it fries you. Chip truth.]  
\-- Twisted Fate [2075-4-22; 09:32:38 PM]

[So ka. Any idea who it was?]  
\-- Monsoon [2075-4-22; 09:32:51 PM]

[Not a clue. Went in with a persona wearing armor, had a nice helmet. His programs were blue cloaked thingies, if that helps.]  
\-- Twisted Fate [2075-4-22; 09:33:02 PM]

[I knew him.]  
\-- Monsoon [2075-4-22; 09:36:53 PM]

[Tell you what, Monsoon. If I get wind of a job heading that way, I’ll personally take it and smash some heads for you. For him, I mean.]  
\-- brokenecho [2075-4-22; 09:37:48 PM]

[Hmf. Your schoolboy crush is sickening. As are your puns.]  
\-- thevictoriousevolution [2075-4-22; 09:38:39 PM]

Seeing where it would go from here, and realizing he was about to be late anyway, Tobias began the return “home.” Sarah would have a lot to talk about.

With his mind back, securely in his ratty apartment, he checked his commlink. His little Sprite had turned up at least a little info. While he waited, he read it over. The results, while sparse, gave some indication of what they were dealing with.

N.O.X. seemed to be a company that developed security and encryption technologies, as he’d remembered. They’d already claimed a patent for some kind of throwing weapon, presumably aimed at adepts. Other than that, the search had only turned up a single headline, one which had been buried in the news archives of a local paper:

“N.O.X. CEO Replacement Named: Jericho Swain”

The article itself was terse, only saying that the previous CEO had died of natural causes (as reported by Lone Star law enforcement) and that his replacement carried the same degree. It didn’t even say _which_ degree, although it was presumably business. And that was it. Nothing else came up, aside from rumor and speculation. There wasn’t even a history of the company outside of a brief, perfunctory blurb from its founding.

There was a knock at the door. With a wave of his hand and a silent command through the wireless network that pervaded his living space, Tobias opened the door. 

“Good to see you’re back,” said Sarah Fortune, stepping into the dimly-lit apartment. “How’d the hunting go?”

“Good enough,” he replied, shuffling his feet a bit. In his haste to look at his Sprite’s findings, he’d forgotten to clean the place up a bit. Piles of discarded clothing and discarded Stuffer Shack wrappers littered the floor. Hardly the kind of environment his friend had gotten used to by this point. 

“Alright. Let’s start going over what we know,” said Sarah. “The Johnson sent me her info.”

“I’d, uh, offer you a place to sit, but….” Tobias trailed off. He hadn’t had the money to spend much on furniture. Technomancy burned a lot of calories. 

“It’s fine. You might want to sit down, though. I’ve got an idea of what we’re going to need, but I’m not sure you’re going to like it….” 

“You want to WHAT?”

Sarah had been right. Tobias didn’t like it.

In the Redmond Barrens, a grizzled ork man sat in a bar, nursing the cheapest whiskey the already-cheap establishment had. The drink was so watered-down it barely qualified as alcohol at all, but there was still enough burn to make it worth the few nuyen it had cost for the bottle. 

Light glinted off metal as the man tipped himself back along with his shot glass. His arms, under the ragged, dusty poncho he wore, were sleek, deadly metal. They, along with his eyes, had been replaced after a run-in with Lone Star and their tender care, though an observer would have been hard-pressed to tell when it came to the eyes. The man drank with the single-minded determination of those who acquired alcohol to get very, very drunk, usually because it was the only way they could face the world without wanting to put a bullet in it. 

Someone tapped him on his chrome shoulder. He barely turned, only tilting his head enough to see the people who had interrupted him while remaining in position for another shot. 

“You look familiar, omae,” said a large troll in ragged combat gear. 

“Could be,” replied the drinker, in the low drawl of the southern Confederated American States. 

“Real familiar. Wanted poster familiar, even.” There were six others with him, a group encompassing all types of metahumanity. They all rested their hands on various weapons strapped to their hips.

The bartender, having long been witness to these kinds of happenings, had already put his less-cheap products behind the bulletproof bar. He joined them, wearily putting in a pair of old-fashioned earplugs. 

“Had a few people wanted me dead,” said the drinker, eyes firmly on his bottle of whiskey. He sniffed, running his cyberhand through his impressively-maintained beard. 

The troll smiled, his tusks giving him the appearance of a diseased carnivore. “Think there’s a few more. Tough luck for you. Piles of jing for us.” 

The group began to close in. For a moment, the drinker did nothing. Then, in a blur of motion, the troll was on the floor, whimpering in pain, one of his compatriots had dropped to the floor with the remnants of a shot glass in his face, and the others had frozen, transfixed by the gleaming double-barrel of a shotgun pointed in their direction. 

“Now then,” drawled the drinker. “We can do this a couple of ways. One, you let me be and I finish my drinking in peace.” He nudged the fallen troll. “Two, you can stand there gawking, and your boss finds out what happens when I punch him in the sack again.” The male members of the group winced, looking at the ork’s cyberlimbs. They looked built for speed and strength in equal measure. 

The drinker heaved a sigh. “Or three, you keep trying to interrupt me, and I let Destiny here do the talking.” He gestured, almost affectionately, at the weapon in his hands. “Let me tell you about Destiny, in case you’re thinking you can take me. This here is a customized PJSS Model 155. Modified firing chambers.” He hefted the shotgun, showing off the oversized revolving wheels for the shells. “She doesn’t shoot buckshot. Instead, I’ve built her to fire military-grade discarding sabot slugs. Punches right through body armor like an arrow through a paper target, and the hay bale it’s stuck on. Of course, I’ve also got some flechette rounds instead of buckshot, if I feel like it. And,” he added, tapping his temple with a grim smile, “she’s linked to my eyes here, just to make sure I hit what I want to hit. Now, to be honest, I can’t quite recall if I loaded the slugs or the flechettes. So if you feel like trying your luck, it’ll be a toss-up between having nails through your guts, or being torn apart with a storm of shrapnel. Messy ways to go, either way.” 

The gang stayed frozen for about five seconds. One of them, a dwarf with perhaps more courage than common sense, began to edge his hand towards the taser holstered at his side. It was meant to be subtle and stealthy, or at least what he thought was subtle and stealthy. He stopped when he heard the blast of the shotgun firing, and a certain sudden breeziness in the region of his scalp. 

The ork with the shotgun raised an eyebrow, amused. “Well, what do you know? I had the slugs in. Nice haircut, chummer.” The dwarf’s mohawk, previously a point of pride for him, was now split clean down the middle. The hole in the wall behind him smouldered. 

The dramatic _shk-chunk_ of the shotgun being pumped would stay in the memories of the would-be bounty hunters forever, much like the terrifying grimace on the face of the man wielding it. “So,” he said, voice low and dangerous like a stalking panther. “Anyone fancy their chances? I’ll aim to hit this time.” 

In moments, the bar was empty, save for the ork, the man crawling away wiping glass out of his face, and the fallen troll. Casually, the ork lit a cigar, took a deep pull on it, leaned down, and picked up the groaning troll by the collar. 

“So, omae,” he said, blowing smoke into the troll’s face, “I got a favor to ask. Don’t bother saying anything. I know you’ll do it for me, since you’re a nice fellow and all.” 

He leaned in closer. “I want you to tell the drek-sucking corporate scum that hired you that Malcolm Graves isn’t a bounty to be collected. The next time someone insults me like that, I’ll come after their head. You got that?”

The troll, still in searing pain, just nodded. Graves dropped him. 

“Good,” he said, turning back to his whiskey. “Now go crawl back to whatever rathole you live in. I’ve got drinking to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now this is a target-rich chapter. I'll tell you right now that Cyclone, CalFree, and Zeitrich were all characters I just made up on the spot, and Bull, Glitch, The Smiling Bandit, and Baka Dabora are actual characters in the default Shadowrun setting. The rest of the JackPointers are Champions. Have fun figuring it out!
> 
> ... ye GODS the JackPoint section was a pain in the ass to format. Sadly I couldn't use my original formatting, which was supposed to match the way posts are formatted in the Shadowrun Returns games. Dammit. Oh well.
> 
> And of course what better way is there to introduce someone as badass as Graves than by having the guy nut-punch a troll?


	4. Resentment

“Sarah, this is an incredibly bad idea.” 

“Tobias, if you'd just-”

“No! I'm not going to listen. Graves thinks we're the reason he got nabbed by the Star, and I've seen what he does with that shotgun of his. You know how he held a grudge.”

“Yes, I do.” Ms. Fortune paced impatiently. “I also know that he's the best security man we've ever worked with. Look at what we've got on N.O.X. and tell me we don't need his help.”

Tobias gritted his teeth. His experience with the corp's IC only reinforced the thought gnawing at him. This job was going to be extraordinarily difficult just to survive. As a result of his friend's overconfidence, they couldn't afford to fail. Her employers would track her down, and likely had ways of finding out who she'd hire for the run to track _them_ down as well. He couldn't afford to be found by a corp. A few of the terrified JackPoint posts from the past month danced across his mind's eye, and he repressed a shiver. 

As much as he didn't want to admit it, she was right. Hiring another runner was too much of a liability – with a payday like this, whoever they got for security might just leave them to die mid-run, take their paydata, and collect the whole reward for themselves. Graves might carry a hell of a grudge towards them, but he wouldn't let a corp get their hands on them. No, that'd be too easy. The way Graves did things, he'd make it personal. 

“Alright, alright, just... you do the talking.” Tobias turned away.

Sarah only nodded her thanks before activating her commlink. If her employers were going to track her anyway, they may as well know who to pay. 

An AR icon lit up in the empty bar. Graves growled. He flicked at it, dismissing the call. 

The icon lit up again, hovering like a persistent fly. Graves dismissed it again.

A third time, the AR icon lit up. Graves paused. Only a few people would bother calling him three times...

The AR image of Graves' face that popped into existence in front of Ms. Fortune and Tobias was an accurate portrayal of the man's irritation. His scowl grew when the image on his own end showed him not one, but two figures from his past.

“You've got a hell of a nerve,” he spat, “calling me.” 

“But you picked up,” replied Sarah. 

“Figured it'd be someone else. Someone who didn't stab me in the back.” 

“Look, regardless of what hap-”

“To hell with you!” Graves snarled, reaching to dismiss the call. 

“You want to know what happened?” Tobias snapped, still keeping his back to the commlink. “You want to know why you got arrested?” 

“Answer's simple,” said Graves, his voice low and dangerous. 

“You don't even know what really happened.”

“Enlighten me.” The venom in the ork's voice could have poisoned a rhino. 

Sarah took over the conversation. “We were hit on three sides at once, Malcolm. While Lone Star was shooting at you outside, Tobias was surrounded by ice in the Matrix and the rest of us were trying to get to the boat.” 

It had been a simple plan for what should have been a milk run. It was a harbor security office, and all they had to do was alter some records. The client had a unique treasure arriving on a particular ship, one that the law didn't need to know about. It would have been a simple on-line break-in, but the harbor master insisted on also keeping a physical log of his cargo manifests. So while Tobias disabled security remotely, Graves would keep watch while dressed as a Knight Errant security officer, and Sarah and the rest of the crew would make the necessary alterations. 

A simple plan, except for one flaw. Knight Errant, while having acquired the contract for Seattle's _general_ police work, still competed with the original holder, Lone Star, for private ones. 

Private ones such as this particular section of harbor. 

When the deception was uncovered by some patrolling Star cops, it had quickly come to shooting. Trickery had never been the ork gunman's strong suit. Things had only gotten worse from there. IC of all kinds had swarmed Tobias' avatar, forcing him to drop everything to defend himself. Sarah and the rest of the crew had run for their boat. Graves had quickly been subdued, thanks to flashbangs and the marvelous invention of the Fichetti Pain Inducer. The run went from “terrible” to “hell in a handbasket” when the Lone Star officers realized which boat the crew was heading for, and blew it up. The only reason the remainder of the crew had gotten out was that they dived into the freezing Seattle waters anyway, knowing that hypothermia was temporary, while Lone Star incarceration tended to be permanent. 

“We didn't have a choice. If any of us stayed behind, then all of us would have been taken in. I'm sorry.” 

“Sorry? _Sorry?_ You think five letters are going to fix years in one of the Star's lockups?” Graves was shouting now, and would have been reaching for Destiny had the other two been there in person. 

“No, and I don't expect them to, but-” 

“Stuff it, Sarah. The day you abandoned me is the day you lost any chance of getting in my good graces again.” 

“Will you shut up and listen?” Tobias finally spun to face the commlink, incandescent with rage. “We tried, Malcolm. We tried to get you out.” 

“Yeah, that worked out real nice.”

“They're dead! You hear me? They died trying to save your ungrateful hide!” 

Graves felt the bottom drop out of his stomach, taking his righteous fury with it. “Wh-... what?”

“You heard me,” said Tobias, a sob creeping into his voice. “Kolt. Wallach. Brick. They're dead. Killed on sight by Lone Star.” 

“You... you're lying,” said Graves. “You have to be.” 

“I saw them fall,” Sarah said quietly. “Kolt was shot. Sniper got him right between the eyes. Not enough left for a funeral. Wallach got torn apart by some kind of spirit. Brick wouldn't stop fighting, not even when they hit him with tasers. They just kept firing. Even when the combined voltage brought him down, he was still trying to reach the door. The only reason I got out alive is because I was in the van. I was charging the doors with it when they shot the tires and I lost control. They were about to shoot me while I was on the pavement when there was an explosion.” She shook her head. Even now, looking back, she still couldn't quite believe it. “Brick went up in flames.” 

Graves' jaw worked noiselessly for a moment. “Cranial bomb. The crazy bastard finally had it installed.” 

Sarah nodded. “I don't... I don't think he intended to walk out alive. Especially not after the other two went down.” 

“Alright,” said Graves, despite himself. “Alright. Assuming you're telling me the truth, why even try?”

“Because you're one of the best there is, Graves. And Lone Star's not done paying for what they did to our crew.” 

“Hah.” The ork spat. “Flattery won't buy you anything. Not even a discount.” He paused. “And I can make them pay on my own time. What's in this for me?”

“Six hundred.” 

“... thousand?”

Sarah nodded again. 

“Each?”

She smiled thinly. “No, not quite that much. Between us and whoever else we hire.” 

Graves gave this due consideration. Even split, that was a lot of money. Enough to buy a bolthole and enough ammo to re-enact Kolt's death on every Lone Star officer in the city. Possibly twice over, even on the off chance he'd miss a few shots. 

“Deal,” he said, finally. His eyes glinted in the dim light of the bar, hard as steel and cold as winter. “But only for this run. Just because I'm getting paid and you got three good people killed trying to get me out doesn't mean I trust you again.”

He closed the connection and sighed. If they'd lied to him, he'd extract the bloody vengeance he'd been planning for them thrice over. It would be slow and painful. But if they hadn't.... 

The ork felt hollow. Years of hatred, based on a lie. Not even that, but something he'd let himself believe because it was easier than thinking they could have failed him. His hand rested gently on Destiny's stock. How much longer could he keep this up? He was getting old, for an ork. What would have been an easy age for a human was dangerously close to over the hill for him. 

He tossed back one last shot as his commlink beeped. Raising an eyebrow, he checked it. Sarah had sent him a message containing a sizable number of files, a location, and six hundred nuyen. 

“Meet us here,” said the message. 

Graves looked at the location again. He knew the place. It was a hole in the wall, but anywhere was better than here. 

When he left, he took the bottle with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Graves? Why yes, he mad. He very mad. Of course, I would be too, in his position.... 
> 
> In this particular version of their story, Graves bears a really nasty grudge against TF due to the fact that Mr. Fancy-Shmancy Technomancer could have, in his mind, prevented the entire thing from going up in flames by hacker wizardry. No, Graves is not particularly knowledgeable regarding how the Matrix actually works. TF will have to fix that.


	5. Razorgirl

Graves picked idly at a tusk, having finished his bowl of soy noodles. Tension hung in the air like the sword of Damocles. 

“Alright,” he said finally. “I can see why you took the risk of calling me.” 

He'd looked through all of the data on the cab ride over. Everything Sarah's employers had sent her, Tobias' personal account, what his Sprite had uncovered, all of it. The building was a tremendously dangerous prospect. Security teams patrolled the interior regularly, and there was always at least three squads of corp security outside, supplemented by hired Lone Star officers. Mages working for the firm that hired Sarah had done a preliminary sweep, scanning the astral realm, and found magical defenses on par with the electronic ones – that is to say, the _real_ electronic ones. Six hundred thousand was just on the edge of a low bid for a job like this. 

“Look,” he said, “this place is armed to the teeth. I'd expect something like this out of a triple-A R and D site. Ares, maybe. Mitsuhama. Only reason I don't mention Renraku is no Red Samurai to keep the place on lockdown.” He lit a cigar and chomped down in contemplation. “Good thing they're paying you in a multiple of six. We're going to need three others.”

“And how do you figure that?” Tobias asked. 

Graves counted it off on his fingers. “One, you're going to need another runner who's as good with weapons as I am. We've got no guarantees it'll stay quiet, and when it stops being quiet, there's going to be a hell of a lot of bullets in the air.”

Sarah nodded. She preferred her runs to not involve shooting, but that was going to be tough in this case. 

“Two, you're going to need a rigger. A spider, probably. Someone who can man the getaway vehicle, whatever we decide that is, and who can rig themselves into the building to fry the security systems.” A puff of cigar smoke decorated the stagnant air of the noodle bar. “Both at the same time, if possible.”

Tobias frowned to himself. Maybe....

“Three, you're going to need a mage. Shaman, hermetic tradition, don't care. As long as they can take down the wards your intel says are around the place. Otherwise we'll just get eaten by spirits. Nasty ones, too, from what this says.” Graves suppressed a shiver. “Reminds me of Chicago.” 

The other two shifted uncomfortably. Nobody liked talking about Chicago. Some people, ones who hadn't even been to the city before, still had nightmares of _things_ with rustling chitin and skittering, countless legs. The psychiatrists of the Sixth World were doing better business than ever before. 

“Alright,” said Sarah, slowly. “Any ideas on where to find these people?”

Graves took a deep pull of his cigar before answering. “Got one, at least. Heard of a street samurai a while back. Real good with a blade, decent enough with a pistol. That's fine by me, since I've got Destiny here and these-” he flexed a cybernetic fist “-for anyone dumb enough to get close. Might be able to track her down easy enough. Think she's got a grudge against some corp or another. Could be ours.” He grinned, tusks glinting in the dingy light. “Maybe we'll get a discount on hiring her?” 

Discounts were the last thing on the mind of a certain white-haired woman. Six trolls, all wearing the colors of the newest gang on the Seattle streets – the Iceborn – and bearing large clubs made of whatever they could stick on a length of pipe, surrounded her. The woman stood perfectly at ease, assessing the trolls with the practiced eye of a veteran security officer. Her stance, the trained relaxation of an elite corporate guard, was totally at odds with the rags she wore. 

The leader of the troll squad towered over her, leering and licking his tusks. He didn't need to say anything. The set of his shoulders and the meaningful way he was tapping his club against his palm said it all. 

Calmly, the woman removed her dark glasses, revealing brown eyes hardened by strife. If the troll had been more perceptive, or had more common sense, he might have recognized the eyes of a dangerous woman. If he had spent longer on the streets, he might have recognized the eyes of a shadowrunner. 

“I'm offering you one chance to back down,” she said in a calm contralto. “Walk away before this gets ugly.” 

The troll laughed. “Try it, girlie. I want to see how much you bleed.” 

“I take it that you're refusing, then.” 

In response, the troll lifted the club over his head. The other five followed suit. 

A brief thought flashed through the woman's mind, taking the form of electricity arcing through her brain and across the connection to her spinal cord. A nanometric-scale device carried the charge down equally microscopic wires, spreading it in a surge throughout the woman's body, activating a complex system of nerve-bonded wires and adrenal pumps. 

For the woman, time slowed down. 

For the trolls, the woman became a blur, and three of them fell to the street, blood spurting from horrifically precise cuts across their throats to mingle with the swirling rainwater. 

Stunned, one of the remaining Iceborn gangers dropped his club and turned to flee. The other two charged. 

The three were dead before the club hit the ground. 

Carefully, Riven, as she was known amongst the shadows of Seattle, held up her blade in a martial salute. The industrial rain washed the trolls' blood off the broad, cracked sword, dripping down off the hilt. Once, it had been something close to a claymore in size, its edge sharpened to monomolecular thinness. Now it was only half as long, the tip having been broken years before. Age had not dulled the edge of the weapon, however, nor had rough living on the streets blunted the skills of its wielder. If anything, she was sharper than ever. 

Wiping the remnants of the mess off on the coat of one of the fallen trolls, Riven bitterly mourned the choices her opponents had made that had led them to this fate. It was not for long – only enough to mentally curse their foolishness – but it was enough. The Sixth World was not kind to those who inflated themselves on goblinoid machismo and petty bullying. Not, at least, while she was around. It was one of the few things in her line of work that gave her some measure of joy. There were plenty of people willing to have the gang boss or drug lord next door killed, paying a fistful of nuyen or a bowl of only half-stale nutrisoy noodles. The world was a better place for it. 

What was left of her original heart stayed just a bit warmer at night when she completed those jobs. It was the dealers in BTL chips, little plastic software to slot into your head and escape to where everything was Better Than Life, that fueled that fire the most. No one cared if a man drank himself to death or played with back-alley amphetamines, but addiction to BTLs made Riven's blood boil. The ones that hid behind simulations or recreations of old entertainments were cowards. The ones that starved themselves for another few minutes in synthesized heaven, until their bodies wasted away completely, were pathetic. And then there were those that couldn't get enough, couldn't be satisfied with synthetic memories of ambrosia for food and sex with porn stars. Those were the ones that sought out the worst that dealers would offer, the goods that even gangers and criminal lowlifes wouldn't touch. Simsense recordings of horrible indulgences of the darkest urges of the metahuman id: snuff BTLs; brutal, demeaning pornography; experiences of mind-wrenching torture as either the perpetrator or victim. These were the things that such dealers would peddle. All of it recorded by someone with the proper implants, often right next door to where they were forced to sleep. If they were lucky. 

Many a BTL dealer had woken to the chaos of combat, only to find their guards slaughtered and a monofilament blade tearing through their chest. 

Riven hated how easy it was. Not for the retribution, no, but because of what had been done to her to enable it. Once, she had been just a security operative, trying to make a decent wage organizing guard shifts and keeping pesky shadowrunners out of her modest corporation's vaults. She still had nightmares of waking up in a surgery theater, her whole body burning with the cyberware they had forced on her nerves and into her spine to make her faster, deadlier, more efficient. Nightmares of buckets filled with crimson-dyed sponges, of dry heaving onto sterilized plastic floors, of faceless guards – possibly even people she had once employed – forcing her down and sedating her, to leave her in an alley for the rats and roving gangs. 

Trudging through the streets, leaving the bodies to be picked over by urban scavengers both metahuman and not, Riven suppressed a shudder. Thinking back on what N.O.X. had done to her seldom led to a pleasant night. 

In the musty shelter of the latest tenement she took refuge in, the woman carefully dried her sword. It wasn't so much that the weapon needed it as it was something to do. Riven did not casually use her commlink, out of a lingering fear that her former employers would track her through it. Occasionally, she would go to the JackPoint boards for work or information, or she would research a target, but the only communications she would engage with were those sent directly to her. Therefore, it surprised her when the commlink beeped with a message. 

Suspiciously holding onto her sword, Riven checked it. It was text-only – not exactly reassuring. 

[You're the poster on JackPoint that goes by Exile, right?]

The commlink ID was scrambled, as though the signal had been scrubbed completely clean of any identifying information. Her eyes narrowed. 

[Who wants to know?]

[Another shadowrunner who has a job for you. I work with Twisted Fate and Miss Fortune.]

The names were not familiar to her. After making reasonably sure she was not already being observed, she checked JackPoint for postings under those names. A few came up. Another message blipped onto her commlink as she scanned them.

[Hello?]

[Checking your credentials. A totally anonymous message out of nowhere doesn't exactly give me a good first impression, omae.] 

[Fair enough. We need a weapons specialist. Heard you had a falling out with a former employer. We're breaking into an up-and-comer.]

The implication was clear. It was a long shot, but perhaps....

[And this up-and-comer is?]

[N.O.X. United Systems Tech.]

The dingy back room was lit up by a cold smile. 

[A thousand up front, and I want a full cut of the take.]

[You'll have to negotiate with Miss Fortune. But we'd be happy to have you aboard. Meet us here.]

The commlink registered a series of GridGuide coordinates, but Riven knew where it was. Whoever these mystery allies were, they knew how to pick their meeting places. It was a bar – and more – in the Redmond Barrens, known for being a useful place for shadowrunners. The owner of the place was a legend for keeping order; her word alone was enough to ruin the good name of anyone who made trouble in the Seamstress' Union. Riven herself had been there once before, and it was one of the few places she felt some measure of safety. Whether or not her new allies knew that didn't matter. Perhaps fate had decided to be kind this day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! And oh look, a Riven. 
> 
> Translating her to the world of Shadowrun was not quite as hard as I expected it to be. If anything, her story works even better in this setting in many ways. Naturally she still has the slice-and-dice skills, but this time they come from something a bit different. If anything represents manaless champions well in Shadowrun, it's extensive cybernetic augmentation.
> 
> No, I don't have a detailed list of the cyberware N.O.X. forced on her. I can say she has the highest possible level of Wired Reflexes, but that's as specific as I want to get. I think it will serve the story better if I just have a generalized idea of what she's capable of rather than bog myself down with the minutia of figuring out how every possible point of Essence she has was spent. 
> 
> For those not in the know, augmentation in Shadowrun costs you Essence. Essence represents the strength of your soul. Since you're actively cutting parts of yourself away to replace it with machinery, you're effectively ripping out parts of your soul. The higher-grade the augmentations are, the less invasive they are, and the less Essence they'll cost you to install. And once you've installed something, that Essence is gone like the wind. You can't get it back. Wired Reflexes is a bit of cyberware that does basically what you see Riven do, but it's a tremendously invasive procedure. N.O.X. being who they are, they didn't particularly care. Dickbags.


	6. Cybernetic

The room was cold, and dark. Not that the occupants cared. 

A small whirr – a tiny servo, perhaps – broke the fragile silence. A metal plate clicked into place. Fingers as delicate and elegant as porcelain moved gently, and a small soldering iron extended itself with a soft whoosh of displaced air. 

The scorching glow of the iron lit up the inside of an ornately-decorated drone. The case was chased with fine engravings, too precise for any metahuman hand to have made. The owner of the drone saw little purpose in this, but maintained it anyway. It was what Papa would have wanted. Some measure of the light escaped the chassis and fell upon the face of the person whose hand held the torch. 

Someone looking into the room might have flung themselves away in terror, seeing the mask that made up the person's face. The features were clearly meant to be soft and feminine, but they lacked animation and vivacity. A totally immobile visage, some mockery of a classical theatre mask, would have been tolerable, understandable even, but this hovered in such a way that it stirred a nameless fear in an observer's heart. The eyes glowed, dimly blue like an obscene candle, never once betraying any emotion. The nose and lips were sculpted with the same care as Michaelangelo with a Greek muse, but even marble held more of a spark of the soul. 

The flame of the iron fizzled out, leaving the room in total darkness, save for the blue, empty eyes. Darkness was better for working in. Only the drone and its inner workings mattered; everything else could be ignored without being put on stage in the light. A pair of hands settled on the drone's casing. A living person could have been said to be taking satisfaction in a job well done. Instead, imperfections were being tallied. Measurements were being made. Calculations listed. 

Everything according to the design. But there was, as yet, something missing. 

Orianna remembered when her fingers would have felt soft and yielding against the armor of this drone. It had been a long time ago. Her internal clock could have listed the exact duration, down to the nanosecond. But that would have been a distraction. The thought was discarded. 

Her strong, synthetic fingers, her real ones and not the ones confined to the realm of useless memory, closed the panel. At a mere wireless command, the drone flickered back to life. Fluttering rotors kicked and spun, giving the mechanical sphere enough lift to hover over the young woman's lap. She should have been only barely more than twenty-two years old, but everything had changed when Papa went away. 

It was not so bad. She had her drone. And she had her work. Many people liked her work, when they couldn't see her face. They liked it enough to pay her, and some even came back to pay her again for more work. It kept her drone aloft. It kept her body in repair. 

Orianna couldn't understand why people didn't like her body. It was marvelous. That was what Papa had said, before the body was hers. Arms and legs for people who had been failed by their biology. It was not uncommon. 

“This is merely the next step,” he had said. “Imagine the possibilities for those who might never have walked or lifted a spoon again, Orianna!” 

But remembering was a distraction. She had been made to wait, and so she had. She had been-

/- the girl had been -/

\- she had been hit by a vehicle of some kind. Limbs too badly broken to move at all. Pain too great to cry out. 

Paralyzed for life, the other doctors said. Cyberware would have helped, but they would have had to remove so much. It could have cost her dearly. But no, Papa had disagreed, and he had sworn that she would have only the best. 

It was a good gift. But now she had to wait. 

She had woken up that morning-

/- who had she been before -/

\- to find herself in armor. Yes, armor. Never to be hurt again. Men in suits were talking to Papa. He had told her to wait until he could come back. He had left her the drone to keep her company. Just for a few hours. 

Orianna could have calculated the exact number of hours, but it would have been a distraction. It was certainly more than a colloquial few. 

With a thought, she was linked to the drone. Its cameras became her eyes and its armor became her armor as well. Her own eyes -

/- shouldn't I have blinked by now -/

\- became as one with its own. 

Rigging was simple. It was talking to machines in ways they understood. Most people didn't understand. Most people did not have her marvelous body. Instead they had small things like it, pieces that they hid under their skin and bone. It made no sense. Skin and bone were weak. She was strong. They should try to be more like her. But instead they recoiled from her. 

Papa had said she was magnificent. She kept that memory safe, password-locked and encrypted behind many walls. It was her favorite. He looked at her and said she was magnificent. 

His work had been inspired. Someone who had stayed out of her memory had called it divine. And now she was his greatest work. Every part of her was of his design, be it through DNA or machining. 

And so she waited. She took jobs to pass the time. It kept her drone-

/- his drone -/

-her drone in repair. She didn't need much more than that. The occasional bit of food, perhaps. A safe place to sleep when she required it, which was infrequent. Her skills were in high demand when she offered them. She couldn't understand why others had such trouble. It was simple. But they couldn't grasp it. 

Some small part of her noted that it was appropriate that her commlink beeped as she was thinking about work. Someone had made her an offer. With the inchworm-perfect grace of the finest clockwork she reached down and picked it up. 

The offer was intriguing. The sender knew her work, not personally, but by reputation. She could make money. A lot of money. Enough to...

… the possibilities whirled in Orianna's head. A small, blasphemous thought made her pause. Perhaps she could do more than wait. Papa might even be impressed by her diligence. Yes. She would be able to show him how much more she could do. 

Orianna sent back a reply. She would join. It was good work, and she would do it well. How could she not?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was FUN. I haven't really gotten to do much in the way of creepy yet and this was a really great chance to do so.


	7. Derelict

A soft blue light flickered through the derelict. It was rare to find a totally empty building, especially in Seattle, but the Redmond Barrens had everything. Most “abandoned” buildings had squatters, at the very least, and more than half the time that's what you would find. The remainder had been cleared of their inhabitants, usually at corp gunpoint, to provide a secure, discreet location for a meeting. It wasn't quite a one-in-a-million chance to find one that was well and truly vacant, but it was close. And like the explorer he was, Ezreal had found this one. 

The light bobbed around a corner, just ahead of his outstretched hand. Sniffing, he adjusted his goggles. The sheer amount of dust gave the building a thick filter to the air, and it would have played hell with his allergies if he'd had any. Fortunately, he had the hearty constitution of someone born to the sooty alleyways of an industrial complex. 

Places like this made Ezreal feel alive – an interesting contrast to the dead silence. He enjoyed the stillness, broken only by the soft crunch of his boots on fallen debris. It was a change from the brilliance and neon wash of the populated streets. To the urban explorer, the overstimulating glitz came in two varieties. On the one hand, or perhaps in the one eye, there was the electronic scintillation of ads, of glaringly bright street fashion, of harsh lights from vehicles and drones. To the other, he could perceive vast oceans of swirling color and eldritch shapes, witnessing the astral world. While he enjoyed the gift of assensing, and the other magical powers he possessed, it could get overwhelming at times. That was when he sought out spaces like these – quiet, dark, the only company being the cool breeze and the occasional spirit. Jaunts like these were assuredly illegal, but then, so was operating as a mage without a license. SINless as he was, he would have to make do with the forgery he'd gotten from a fellow shadowrunner. 

He kicked aside a discarded drink can. Whoever had lived here before had probably left in a hurry. Idly, he wondered if they had been forced out by corps or a slumlord. Maybe they'd just been abandoned by the officials in charge of the district and vacated when the building started to fall apart. A few collapsed doorways lent credence to the theory. 

The comforting crunch of debris was cut off by the telltale clink of hard metal. Ezreal knelt down to examine the object he'd stepped on. Short, small, blocky... ah. 

So no, the exodus had not been quiet, at least not judging by the fallen handgun. In the dim magelight, he was reasonably sure he could make out bloodstains on the grip. Confirming it would require him to pick it up, and if the prickle on the back of his neck was any indication, there could well be things he didn't want to disturb. 

Ezreal froze. His senses had sharpened seemingly on their own. Cautiously, he straightened up. His eyes flickered with an internal light before the drab dullness of the surroundings gave way to the ghostly waves of the astral realm. He set his jaw. The images left on the walls of the building's ghost were not pleasant ones. Murals were laid out in blood spatter and the blue-white streaks of pain and fear. The fallen rubble began to look more like collapsed bodies in a charnel house. Blinking and shaking his head, returning to the physical realm, Ezreal began deducing what could have left such violent impressions but no corpses. 

A soft hiss of breath behind him provided the answer. Slowly, he turned. A pale limb flashed out of sight behind a corner. At least he now knew why the building was abandoned. 

Ghouls were pitiable creatures. Once, they had been people. Then they had been exposed to the Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus, specifically the Kreiger strain. Their metabolism changed radically, leading to their bodies decaying. Soon, the only food they could digest was metahuman flesh. Some kept their minds, a vast minority did, but most gave in to the hunger and went feral. If ghouls infested a place, then the other residents soon de-infested. 

Ezreal had met a couple of the sane ones, once. They'd paid him to steal some leftover organs from a street doc who clearly had no use for them. It hadn't been a bad job. Half up front, even. They'd been trusting, the kind of trusting that made you regret entertaining any thought of taking the money and running. It hadn't been hard, either. Few things were, to someone of his arcane skill. Overall, not a bad day's work. 

These, however, did not seem like the kind who would politely offer him a job. Instead, they-

Ezreal ducked. A hissing, hunched shape flew overhead, narrowly missing his blonde hair. As he straightened up, he hastily flexed his fingers into a familiar shape, forcing the mana around him to harden into a barrier. Teeth and claws scrabbled on the mage armor. Ezreal grinned as his body flooded itself with adrenaline. He lashed out with a booted foot and connected heavily, sending the ghoul tumbling backwards. Crumbling noises all around told him that they were circling through the darkness, just outside the small sphere of his light. He welcomed the challenge. 

A horrible snarl cut through the dust as a ghoul charged at him. The air came alive. Power, raw power, rushed down Ezreal's spine and into his hand. It was always a thrill, but the rush of combat lent it an incomparable edge. Light glinted off his goggles, obscuring his eyes, as the bolt of energy flashed from his fingertips into the ghoul's chest. 

The chemical stink of microwaved meat overwhelmed the ethereal scent of dust as the ghoul collapsed, its momentum carrying it a few steps further. Spinning, Ezreal fired off another mage bolt at the ghoul that had lunged at him from behind. It, too, fell, screeching in pain. Never one content to stay in one place for long, Ezreal turned and darted forward, opting to go back towards the entrance he'd found earlier. As fun as it might be to fight a building full of ghouls, he couldn't stay all night. 

Clawed fingers snatched at his coat from behind some rotted boards in the walls, deflected only by the armor he had conjured for himself. He retaliated with a third mage bolt, splintering the wood and, if he'd been lucky, landing a direct hit on the attacker's face. 

As he ran, Ezreal quickly realized that he'd far underestimated how many ghouls there were. The air was now filled with growling. It came at him from all sides. One misstep could...

… well. He wouldn't misstep. Thinking on his feet, as he was prone to doing, the mage shifted his weight and turned, beginning to backpedal towards the exit. Shouting wordlessly, he forced arcane energy down his arms. 

Responding to his force of will, the magic in the air burst into flame, creating a blazing barricade that stopped what sounded like a dozen ghouls in their tracks and catching a few unlucky pack leaders. He could hear them shrieking at their skin beginning to cook as he re-oriented himself and bolted for the exit. 

His breathing came heavier than it should have for his speed. Casting spells drained a mage's stamina, and he was beginning to feel it. Fortunately, he had also packed the modern magic-user's best friend: a Colt America L36. While he wasn't as good with it as he was with a blast of magic, he could still-

Gunshots cracked the auric wall of growling and hissing as Ezreal fired two snap shots. The ghoul that had popped out of the doorway in front of him skittered away, narrowly avoiding having its ears clipped off. Hopping over the garbage that blocked the lower part of the doorway, Ezreal ducked through the cloud of plaster dust and continued forward. 

Thankfully, the exit hadn't been too far. Skidding, he ducked under a lashing arm that threatened to clothesline him and rolled. The disorientation counteracted the momentum, but he fought through it and surged to his feet. Ezreal smirked. As if he could have doubted himself. The exit and the neon-streaked night sky beyond it loomed ahead. 

Suddenly, the world seemed to shift upwards. The hard concrete floor gave his face a European-style welcome. The claw gripping his boot turned into two. Through the haze of pain, he could hear his commlink beeping with a call alert. 

The hungry sussurrus of ghoulish noises began to crescendo. Ezreal felt another hand clamp down on his leg. 

Riding the wave of adrenaline through his blurred vision, he kicked and rolled. As he twisted onto his back, he brought his pistol to bear. Frantically, he emptied his clip. Snarls of pain echoed out from the darkness, but the ghouls didn't let him go. With a cry, he thrust his empty hand forward and put as much force as he could muster into one last manabolt. 

Light flared and ghouls screamed. Grips released. Ezreal scrambled to his feet and lunged for the door. He slammed it shut, replacing the heavy bar that he had hauled off of it when he entered. In retrospect, he probably should have questioned its presence. No matter now. 

The call alert on his commlink had not gone away. As he strutted away, he picked up the call. 

“Hey, you've got Ezreal.” 

He listened to the caller introduce himself. 

“A job, huh? What kind of job?”

He listened again. His eyebrows rose with each word, much like how his grin expanded. 

“Sounds dangerous.”

There was a vague noise of agreement.

“I'm in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we have the last member of the team. Ezreal does get himself in over his head often, doesn't he? Hopefully that won't be a problem for everyone else....


End file.
